#CorkDemo: Students Are Fighting For Their Future Now

STUDENTS from across the Southern Region will unite today (Tuesday October 1st) to fight for their future at the #CorkDemo. The nationwide “Fight for Your Future Now” demonstrations are taking place today against potential cuts to the maintenance grant in the upcoming October budget 2014. The march will begin in UCC and finish in Grand Parade where speeches will be delivered to a large crowd of students.

Students from WIT, UCC, IT Tralee, LIT Campuses, , and CIT will gather at UCC at 1pm and march together to Grand Parade for 2pm to express their collective voice on the upcoming Budget 2014.

The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) warned the Government last week, that students are ready to demonstrate their electoral power in the upcoming Seanad referendum. With voter registration drives underway on campuses across the country, USI expect to have 10,000 students registered on the Student Elector Registration Database (SERD) by polling day on October 4th.

With the budget fast approaching, students in the South and across the country are preparing to fight the rumored 100 million euro cuts to education. Students are mobilising their voting power via SERD, more cuts will be met with targeted voting ahead of next year’s Local and European Elections.

It is imperative for the Government to listen and have the cost of college top of the agenda when making budgetary decisions. Fighting for the future of students now is crucial to the economic recovery of Ireland.

Ciara Guinan USI VP for the Southern Region said:

“Year after year we have seen students and their families targeted in the budget. We are marching on Tuesday the 1st of October to declare that we will no longer stand for students and their families being targeted. Students from across the Southern region are gathering today to speak together as one voice. Across the country students are uniting with one powerful voice that has considerable voting power registered behind it.

Education is the long term gateway to economic recovery; however our current government is too concerned with focusing on the short term and not the long term future of this country. We are calling on the Minister Quinn and his counterparts in Leinster House to listen up and invest in the future of this country- There can be no more cuts to the student maintenance grant.”